Iranian Women Unveiled (2020): a documentary film about six Iranian women activists produced in relation to a feminist analysis of the representation of Iranian women in cinema

My PhD is a practice-based project containing a feature-length documentary, Iranian Women Unveiled, and an accompanying written thesis. The documentary is a portrayal of the lives and struggles of six influential Iranian women activists, now living in exile, engaged in a number of areas of political and social activism. These areas encompass the fight for women’s rights and equality, for secularism, free thought and expression, for civil liberties, the abolition of the death penalty and stoning, redress for families of executed political prisoners, and for workers’ rights. The six women in my film, together, thus represent important areas of social protest in the current Iranian society against the Islamic regime, institutions and laws in Iran and, more generally, against political Islam.

I made my documentary as a practical contribution to the development of a progressive and independent cinema in Iran. The choice of women activists was a deliberate attempt to leverage an empowered representation of women in cinema, as a polar opposite to the dominant patriarchal and misogynistic portrayals of women in Iran’s official cinema, which are explored in the thesis.

My documentary explores representation of women in cinema around a number of key themes, such as women's bodies, women's voice, dance, music and use of colour. Women's free expression in all these areas comes into conflict with the misogynistic laws and institutions in place in Iran. The cinematic forms and devices that I employ aim to allow an actually existing, empowered image of the Iranian women to emerge.

The thesis, as well as the film, build a foundation for further research on the representation of women in cinema in other countries living under Islamic laws. The critical perspectives and the particular practical-activist approach employed also have the potential to be applied to studies of women's rights (and wider social justice) issues in films and artistic productions in the West and globally.

Documentary submission

Iranian Women Unveiled (2020)

https://youtu.be/oBjlla5-CKg